Back in the day, when I was a teen-ager, one of my favorite Marvel books was The Defenders. Now, I didn't get in on the ground floor of this title, when the Defenders consisted of Dr. Strange, the Hulk and the Sub-Mariner. I picked it up a little later, when the team had folks like Nighthawk, Hellcat, and especially the Valkyrie.
I liked the Valkyrie. What she was, was the spirit of, well, a Valkyrie occupying the body of Barbara Norris, a human woman. I'm not sure why. In any case, Val had an assortment of superhuman abilities and a sword. (A sword is always cool.) She also had, unfortunately, a husband--or, rather, Barbara Norris had one, Jack Norris, who kept coming around pestering her to come back to him and be his wife. Val, of course, was not Barbara, and although she was considerably more patient with him than I would have been in her place, eventually enough was enough, damn it.
So I came across some old issues a few months back, and while I haven't sat down to read them in detail, I have looked it over. And what I am surprised to find is that, this time around, I actually have some sympathy for Jack Norris. Way back when, I considered him an annoyance--couldn't he get it through his thick head that the Valkyrie was not his wife? Why did he keep coming around bothering her? Why didn't he just leave her alone when she so obviously didn't want him? Why not get on with his life? (All right, I'm lying there--I didn't care a fig whether Jack Norris got on with his life. I didn't care a fig about Jack Norris. I just cared that he was annoying Val, who my teenage self thought was so totally cool.)
But now--what, 35 years later? Now that I've been married, I have a little more appreciation for poor Jack. Sure, he's still a bit of a dick--he was, after all, somewhat of a 70s-era stereotypical chauvinist, and therefore wasn't unhappy only because his wife had left but because she was now a superheroine--but I no longer roll my eyes when he shows up, and I can even feel a little sorry for him, and maybe even admire him a tiny bit for not giving up. I sure wouldn't want to be married to him, but that's beside the point.
But as a teenager? Jack Norris was the epitome of an unsympathetic character. I loathed him. He was trying get in the way of the entirely awesome Valkyrie, to take her away from her awesome life as a superhero and drag her back to "normal" life. Normal life is fine and all...but not when you have the option of being an awesome sword-swinging superheroine instead.
5 comments:
Yay for Val! I wish they'd bring her back to the 616 Marvel U (because I didn't care much for the Ultimate Version).
And you make a good point, the poor husband is definitely more nuanced as you look back. Just more proof, IMHO, that they knew how to write better comics back then :)
Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
Take it and run.
There have been promo pictures of a sharp looking Valkyrie figure floating around for a while. Hopefully, it'll turn up this year. She kind of got burned on that promo shot for "One More Day," didn't she?
Whatever happened to Jack, anyway?
I was way late on the Defenders in fact I showed up just as the old members all quit and the comic became the New Defenders. Remember that!
But I like the team a lot and spent a quite a few bucks buying back issues.
That whole thing with Valkrie is very allegorical of what was happening with woman in the 70s. The gender interpretations are staggering.
I agree. I'm reading Essential Defenders now and he really doesn't seem like that big of a jerk. Sure, he has his problems and part of me wants to shake him and tell him "She's not the same person! Get over it!" But I figure I'd have trouble letting go too if my husband had his mind taken over. I'm sure I'd keep thinking he'd snap out of it like a soap opera amnesiac.
Thanks!
Seriously though, I always liked the fact that after he gave up on Val, he continued to hang around the Defenders just because, well... that's the kind of book the Defenders was. "Who's that? Oh, Val's sort-of ex-husband, or her body's, or whatever... what? Powers? No, he just came looking for Val and ended up hanging out with us." To me, that says so much about what I loved about the Defenders, which is why I chose the name for my blogger identity.
Also, he was a bit of a goof, but they could have made things easier with a better attempt to explain the situation to him..."Yeah, your wife vanished, joined a weird cult, and now she wears this bizarre steel-bra outfit and doesn't recognize you. Now shut up and get lost." It's not all that surprising that his first response wasn't just to be cool with it and leave them alone.
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